This blog started as a catalog of my food obsession. Well, my food obsession hasn't shrunk but I sure have: 55 pounds off and still going strong! Now I'm trying to make the plunge into primal/paleo eating. Expect lots of photos of the food I make.

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

By the way, this is the lunch I made myself with the sausages -- also featuring braised red cabbage and those little dumplings that come in a box. I think they're called Spaetzle.

Final verdict: pretty good! I of course always have criticism of my work (they burst out from the ends of the casings, which caused them to lose flavor), but for a first effort I'm pretty proud of myself.

Now that I've made sausages and survived (it wasn't as difficult or traumatic as everyone always suggests it will be), I find myself with an unshakeable hankering to make... haggis. What better way to get my Scottish on?

Burns Night is January 25th. I think that's enough lead time to find someone who will sell me sheep guts, isn't it?

If you're doing this with a Kitchen Aid, you have to take apart and reassemble your attachment so that it's set up to stuff and not grind. Once you've got that all ready, you open one end of a piece of casing, slide it onto the little funnel thing, and then just keep sliding more and more casing on there. It may help to grease the funnel before hand, but I didn't feel like it was necessary.

Soak the casings again, this time with one tablespoon of vinegar for every cup of water. You don't have to use fancy vinegar, your basic distilled white works quite well. I just don't happen to have any in the house, so I'm using my least fancy apple cider vinegar.

The idea here is to run cool water through the casings. I was a little freaked by the idea of putting intestines directly on my faucet, so I used the stuffing funnel. Put one end of the casing on the end of the funnel, put the dish of the funnel up to the faucet, and SLOWLY turn on the water.

Gently rinse the casings, smallish sections at a time (mine came conveniently pre-sectioned, I don't know if this is normal) under cool running water. Transfer them to a bowl, cover with more cool water, and let soak.

This was the only part of this whole operation that I started to get squeamish. They looked like such gigantic horrible worms, and they were all covered with salt and this came from the inside of a pig and that's where the poo is made and... and...

I had to take a few deep breaths before going on. But once I was recovered I just took out about as much of the casing as I thought I would need (I ended up having too much, but I was hoping for that rather than too little) and got down to rinsing it.

Kitchen Aid (artisan)Meat grinder attachment for K.A.Sausage stuffer attachment for K.A.Mortar and pestle (which I eventually gave up on in favor of my coffee grinder that is only used for spices)Measuring cups and spoonsOne large ceramic bowlOne not quite as large stainless steel bowlTwo smallish glass bowlsCutting boardLarge, sharp knifeKitchen shearsSharp paring knifeOptional but helpful: kitchen scale

Ingredients:Natural piggy casings (I don't have a good sense of how much you need per amount of meat -- I bought enough for twenty pounds, so I used a little over a quarter of what I had)6.5 lbs pork shoulder (it was quite fatty, so I opted not to add fat to my sausages)1 walla walla sweet onion1/2 oz fresh sage1 T Kosher salt or coarse sea salt1 T freshly ground black pepper1 T mustard seed1 t caraway seed

You will also need:Some vinegarLots of waterPlenty of sanitizing hand soap

You may want: Latex/neoprene/vinyl gloves

I found instructions in a book called "Home Sausage Making" that my wonderful mom gave to me.

Join us today as I will be posting frequent updates throughout the day on Operation: Sausage. That's right, folks, I've got pork shoulder, I've got casings, I've got a meat grinder, WHO COULD ASK FOR ANYTHING MORE???? I also have Hefeweizen and a proud German heritage.

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

I have sinned: many times have I lied, before the Gods and to my fellow man. Many times I have said that I was happy, and I was not.

Never until yesterday had I even known what it was to be truly happy. Now I know, because now I have a food grinder (and optional sausage stuffer!!!) attachment for my Kitchen Aid, and using it was so amazing that I cried a little.

Ah! The day when I buy casings shall be epic!

The world may never be safe again. Where is my oompah music? The only thing that could make this joy more complete would be if I owned a smoker. Of course, I'm already trying to come up with ways to suspend things in my fireplace. I'll let you know how that goes (most likely result: eviction; second: death).